BLACKSBURG, Va. - In another 25 years, little James Eddleton may be a superstar detective with the FBI. But for right now, the 9-month-old is struggling to master the puzzle of the disappearing firetruck.
Seated on his mother's lap, James watches intently as Virginia Tech psychologist Martha Ann Bell repeatedly waves a noisy, plastic firetruck in his face and then hides the toy beneath a plastic bucket. Each time Bell hides the truck, she distracts James momentarily and then tells the smiling toddler to point to the appropriate bucket with his eyes.
James' face lights up after each success as if to say, "Piece of cake."
The fourth time, however, Bell stashes the truck beneath a different bucket with James, once again, watching closely. He pauses, but instead of looking toward the appropriate bucket, James looks to where the truck had been hidden so many times before.
Although he was tricked now, James won't be fooled so easily in two months, according to Bell, who has devoted 15 years to studying the mental processes of toddlers.
Hundreds of babies like James have come through Virginia Tech's Infant Perception Lab and Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, volunteered by parents interested in helping out the growing science of infant psychology. In addition to the pictures of their children in goofy-looking scientific hats, many parents return home with a better sense of why their children behave the way they do, not to mention a few valuable tidbits from experts on baby babble.
Educational process
"One of the things that is really unfortunate about our society is that parents with infants don't have anyone outside of their pediatrician to turn to when an infant is developing," said Robin Panneton Cooper, an associate professor of psychology who runs Tech's Infant Perception Lab. "And you're not going to call your pediatrician with every question. So we are helping educate them about what they can do and what they can't do."
For centuries, scientists have steadily unraveled the mystery of how and why the adult human mind does what it does. Yet the infant mind remains largely uncharted territory, hidden within a child with only minimal communication skills and often even less patience for lengthy observations. This despite the commonly accepted dictum that adult personalities are shaped during those first few crucial years.
Cooper and Bell are among the small group of psychologists worldwide devoted to getting inside toddlers' minds to shed light on their development. By understanding how the youngest of children think and how the infant mind develops, Cooper and Bell and their colleagues have revolutionized child rearing during the past 20 to 30 years. Everything from toy color to crib design has been influenced by infant research.
Of course, babies aren't easy subjects to study. They speak a language indecipherable to adults. They fidget. They cry and lack all ability to compromise. Cooper normally screens at least 40 babies to find the 24 she needs for any of her studies.
Because of the language barrier, Cooper depends largely on infants' most expressive feature: their eyes.
Four-month-old Elizabeth Mazzella didn't mind the attention during a recent trip to Cooper's lab in a non-descript office building in downtown Blacksburg. Seated on her mother's lap, Elizabeth was enraptured by a large red dot blinking on the television screen inches from her face.
The blinking dot, Cooper explained, is to grab the babies' attention. Once the infant is concentrating, the dot changes to a rainbow-colored sphere with colors easily seen by infants. At the same time, a woman's high-pitched voice begins talking from the hidden speakers nearby.
"Good morning!" the voice croons in a style normally reserved for infants and dogs. Like a verbal roller coaster, the woman's voice inflection soars to high pitches and then descends with each word.
"How are you today?"
"What are you doing?"
"Let's go for a walk!"
Unbeknownst to the toddler, a lab assistant in the adjacent room is scrupulously watching Elizabeth's eyes via a camera for the slightest movement. Every time Elizabeth looks away - even for a second - the student stops the voice and brings the blinking red dot back onto the screen until Elizabeth focuses again.
When the voice restarts, it is sometimes slower or has less pitch variation. During such exercises, Cooper and her assistants compare the infant's concentration time with the different voices. Little suction cups attached to the babies' chests and bellies also monitor their heart rate for changes.
Turns out, heart rates drop during slower speech, allowing the infant to relax and focus more easily, Cooper said. Babies also pay closer attention when adults vary the pitch of their voice constantly.
"Since we can't communicate through our words, we have to do it through pitch modulation," said Cooper, who opened the Infant Perception Lab in 1994. Not surprisingly, people who have dogs often tend to be more fluent in baby talk, she said.
Cooper does not share each child's results with the parents, largely because findings from one child are statistically insignificant. Instead, parents receive a letter with a general recap of Cooper's overall findings after the study is complete.
Still, some parents said they learned about their child just by watching the experiments and talking with the lab personnel.
All three of Suzanne Mazzella's children - ages 4 months through 4 years - have been or will be involved in one of Cooper's studies. Her middle son, age 2, enjoys coming to the lab so much that he often pouts when it's time to leave.
"With my third baby, I'm much more aware of how she reacts to things and the sounds she makes," Mazzella said. Like many of Cooper's and Bell's former participants, Mazzella was first contacted by the researchers, who found their names in the birth announcements. But because of recent changes in birth announcement policies, Cooper and Bell now depend on brochures left in hospitals.
A few dozen fathers who recently participated in one of Cooper's studies may wish they never heard their results, however.
Sorry, Dad
In one of Cooper's most intriguing projects, several dozen freshly minted dads videotaped themselves in moments of unscripted baby talk. Their infants then watched the tapes while seated on their mothers' laps in Cooper's lab. When a baby looked away from the television screen this time, however, the tape of his or her father was switched with that of someone else's dad engaged in his own baby talk.
Cooper and her assistants closely monitored the babies' reactions for any difference. Much to everyone's dismay, the younger babies - beginning at 4 months old - didn't seem to care who they were watching.
"When we finished the study, we were so disappointed the babies showed no recognition of Dad because these guys are really good," Cooper said.
Although she is still analyzing the results, Cooper said one theory is that fathers often spend time differently with their children than mothers. While today's dad most likely spends more time one-on-one with his infant than a father decades ago, modern dads are often still hesitant to get down on the same level as their children and interact face-to-face. Instead, some fathers may simply hold their babies in their lap while watching television.
Cooper believes age-old stigmas, in which some men simply do not feel as comfortable around infants as many women do, are at work.
"Dads are kind of waiting for the infant to get to the point where they are interactive," Cooper said. While there is plenty of literature out there targeting mothers, Cooper said, "There are no books on the market for how a father should talk to an infant."
Across town in her central campus laboratory, Tech Associate Professor Martha Ann Bell is researching the physical development of the brain from infancy through adolescence. The hallway leading to Bell's Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab is lined with dozens of pictures of smiling children - each wearing a skull cap with suction cup-like buttons all over - participating in experiments when they were mere toddlers and then later as rambunctious school-aged kids.
As with other muscles in our bodies, humans learn how to use their brain over a lifetime. Some of the most significant changes, however, can be seen in the first few months of life.
One of the most noticeable shifts in early childhood happens in the frontal lobe - that part of the brain needed for intensive memory and concentration skills. The frontal lobe also gives adults the power of inhibition.
Bell, who has taught at Tech for six years, measures those changes through a specialized skull cap that reads brain activity and pin points which area of the infant's brain is working hardest.
In a typical adult playing the firetruck game, only the frontal lobe would show activity as the participant suppresses or inhibits the urge to point to the bucket where the truck is normally hidden. But in most young infants the entire brain lights up, indicating they lack the ability to use the specialized portions of the brain, Bell said.
"Even though they see it over here," Bell said while pointing to the correct bucket, "the fact that it's been over there all this time means they can't resist the urge to go back there."
Little James Eddleton had mixed results on the firetruck test, indicating he is beginning to use his frontal lobe. Lobe development generally begins around 8 months and continues through age 16, Bell said.
Changes happen rapidly in children, with many infants showing remarkable improvements in specialized brain activity from one month to the next. In her next study, Bell hopes to recruit dozens of infants to participate in a study that will track the children's brain development for several years.
Despite all of their study, both Bell and Cooper said the basic fundamentals of parenting will likely never change.
"The most important things are the things parents are already doing: hold their child, talk to their child and just be warm and loving," Bell said.